Uttar Pradesh assembly elections result in a thumping majority to Bhartiya Janta Party despite loud hue and cry on unemployment, farmer protest and inflation. In all these conundrums of electoral politics, what is debilitating is the brutal ignorance and absence of the Dalit factor from mass party politics.
In the 2022 assembly elections, the BSP failed to retain its core vote, which is around 19–21% in Uttar Pradesh, signals new voting dynamics in marginalised classes and indicates a substantial leadership failure of BSP supremo Mayawati. Was it just the political engineering of BJP that successfully allured vote shares from the marginalized classes on the pretext of political representation, or is there more to it?
Mayawati’s Silence
BSP, which has secured an undented core vote share since 1996, in and around 20–25% from 1996 to 2017, concluded with a 12% vote share and just one seat in 2022 UP elections. Probably, the answer lies in the prelude to the elections where flummoxing silence of Mayawati on Dalit atrocities not just angered the BSP core vote; moreover, her credibility as Dalit leader was also jeopardized.
There might be many answers to it, however, the most potent one seems her compromise and deafening silence in lieu of protection from persecution in the pending case of disproportionate assets and corruption. It evolved as a quid-pro-quo of BSP and BJP that protected BSP supremo and her brother Anand Kumar and BJP earned silence and sometimes indirect support of BSP supremo.
We have seen increasing atrocities on Dalits in the Yogi government in the past 5 years amidst cases like Hathras and many more making a resounding media presence. Nonetheless, the BSP supremo did not take these issues earnestly, and her self-prophecy of being the “daughter of Dalit” sounded sunken.
A lady who proclaims to represent the most oppressed class of society surrounds herself with yesmen and minions, never shows herself in the ground, depends on tweets and rare media bites and continues old feudal and fortress style politics. It was one of the fundamental reasons that non-Jatavs lost their faith in the self prophecy of Mawayati, and her vote share started declining after her tenure from 2007 to 2012.
BJP, which showcased a superficial and subtle inclusion of OBCs in the 2017 elections by fielding candidates aggressively from the OBC community, gradually arrived in the den of the Dalit vote and fielded Sonkars, Valmiki’s and Koris (President Ram Nath Kovind). Moreover, 2022 UP elections results show that it even damaged the core vote share of Jatavs to a certain extent, if not wholly.
Absence Of The Dalit Factor
Moving to the larger frame, among all these equations based on caste and numbers, the most painful fact that remains is the complete absence of the Dalit factor from assembly elections. Probably in 30 years, it was the first time Dalits were not even on the agenda of UP elections.
Today, the politics in Uttar Pradesh poses an existential crisis for Dalits as BJP will use some strong Dalit names merely as tools to legitimise violence and atrocities against Dalits in general.
The Samajwadi Party has yet to fight the stigma of being a Yadav party that is not seen as a less feudal force than any other general caste by Dalits in Uttar Pradesh.
Congress, which displayed a little emphatic presence by Priyanka Gandhi for Dalit issues, lacked its grassroots hold entirely.
And lastly, the lady who always posed herself as the messiah of Dalits principally runs her politics as a queen in the fortress though she claims to represent someone without “Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan”.
In a nutshell, in a country like India, where empathy and emotional fury has their caste barriers; where the mother of a Dalit rape victim secured almost no votes, the absence of the Dalit factor from electoral campaigns and mass politics is an alarming situation for Indian democracy.